History and Contents of the Shrine.

St Ignatius was born in 1491, died in 1556, was beatified in 1609 and canonized in 1622. But only 59 years after his canonization, in 1681, did the Jesuits receive possession of the Tower-House of his birth and conversion. The transfer of the property was made by the Marquises of Alcañizas and Oropesa de Indias, who were the Lords of Loyola and the legal holders and proprietors of the ancestral house. And it was made through Doña Mariana de Austria, the Queen Mother of Charles II, the last Austria king, who thus became the Royal Founders of the Shrine. A beautiful tablet recalls this transfer in the central courtyard.

In accord with the sensibility of the times, the same that had enclosed in large churches the tombs of the Apostles, the Portiuncola of Assisi and the House of Loreto, so too it was decided to encase the relic of the Tower-House of Loyola in a fitting architectonic reliquary. Jesuit General Giovanni Paolo Oliva (1664-1681) entrusted the plan to Carlo Fontana (1634-1714), who was Bernini’s disciple. On Oliva’s death in 1681, his successor Fr Charles de Noyelle (1682-1686) forwarded the plan to Loyola with orders that it be executed to the letter.

Fontana’s building envisages a 150-meter long façade with a circular church at the center, preceded by a portico and topped by a dome that rests of a drum and is crowned by a lantern. Two large wings spread on either side a central body protrudes at the back like a tail. It has three floors and four attics, two for each wing. The aesthetics of this massive structure depended on the balance of volumes, the distribution of gaps, and the hues of the marbles, some gray and others rose. Five large courtyards made the building lighter inside.

This plan was carried out with some modifications and resembles a gigantic eagle of stone under which the Tower-House, the essential element of the Shrine of Loyola, is sheltered between the circular church and the southern wing. We have devoted an ample space to its exterior and four floors.

On the other side of the church, a space symmetrical to the Tower-House is reserved to the heirs of the Loyola family.